It’s a rare thing in AFL football to recruit an ex-captain from an opposition side, but Brisbane have done it no less than seven times.
It’s one of the great trivia questions… Collingwood’s Mark Williams, Western Bulldogs’ Jim Edmond and Fitzroy’s Matt Rendell were the first three, and Fitzroy’s Brad Boyd, who moved north via the merger, and Hawthorn’s Luke Hodge, the last two.
Fourth and fifth on the list are two ex-captains of Geelong, the Lions’ round 18 opponent at the Gabba on Saturday afternoon - Damian Bourke and Andrew Bews.
The pair, whose sons both played at AFL level, are two of 21 players to have played for Brisbane and Geelong over Brisbane’s 37 years in the AFL.
Bourke, Cats skipper from 1987-89 before Bews took charge in 1990-91, moved to Brisbane in 1993 after the pair had spent 10 years together at the Cattery, including the 1989 grand final loss to Hawthorn.
An old-fashioned ruckman, he played 22 games in three injury-plagued seasons at the Gabba but left a legacy in the shape of son Jordon, a classy full forward who represented Queensland at the 2011 Australian Under 18 championships, winning the division two medal.
A graduate of the Lions Academy, Jordon was included in the AIS/AFL Academy squad with none other than Joe Daniher and future Lions draftee Sam Mayes, among a host of future AFL stars.
He was a member of the Lions’ 2014 NEAFL premiership side after making his AFL debut in the last round of that season, and was the first Lions Academy product to graduate to the Lions’ AFL side. He played a further five games in 2015 before being de-listed.
Bourke Snr lives these days in Torquay, 21km south of Geelong, and after having been involved in property development in Brisbane is now a lawyer, specialising in family law. And at 58 he’s back on the parenting wheel, father to three-year-old Faith.
Read about Andrew Bews here
The first members of the Brisbane-Geelong common players club were ex-Cats Steve Reynoldson and David O’Keeffe, who were members of the very Bears side in 1987. Reynoldson was deputy vice-captain.
Craig Evans made it three ex-Cats in the Bears’ first season, and was followed by David Cameron and Shane Hamilton in 1991 before a football journeyman named Adrian Fletcher arrived at the Gabba in 1993. He’d started his career at Geelong before a stint at St.Kilda on his way to Brisbane before finishing at Fremantle, where he was Dockers co-captain in 2000-01.
It was a fortuitous recruiting move by the Bears, of course, because the capture of Hobart-born Fletcher led the club to his son - eye-catching 2023 debutant Jaspa Fletcher.
Bourke and Martin Heffernan also made the move from Geelong to Brisbane in 1993 before Bews followed in 1994. Finally, Tristan Lynch and Scott Bamford, a member of the ‘Chosen Eight’ they moved to Brisbane via the merger with Fitzroy, reversed the trend when they headed to Geelong in 1999. In the same year Martin McKinnon moved in Brisbane.
Brent Moloney (2013) and Trent West (2014) followed to the Gabba before Mitch Clark, pick #9 in the 2005 National Draft and an 82-game Lions from 2006-11, ended up at Geelong in 2015 after a stopover at Melbourne.
Allen Christensen, a 2011 Geelong premiership player, joined Brisbane in 2015 before Josh Walker did likewise in 2016, when another high Brisbane draft pick, Lachie Henderson, joined the Cats after time at Carlton.
Since then the Lions have picked up three ex-Cats who are still with the club – Lincoln McCarthy (2019), Nakia Cockatoo (2021) and Darcy Fort (2022).
And for the trivia buffs, part two of the captain’s trivia … who are the four Brisbane players who captained an AFL club after leaving the club? Nathan Buckley (Collingwood), Adrian Fletcher (Fremantle), Craig Bolton (Sydney) and Luke Power (GWS).
